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C A N A D I A N I S S U E SE C O L O G Y

Since their discovery many centuries ago,the Caverns of Caca huamilpa, one of theworld’s most majestic cave formations,

have been the object of study and scientificexploration as well as the scene for rituals anda refuge for warriors and men on the run fromthe law. It is said that in pre-Hispanic times,the indigenous people who inhabited thesurrounding area did not dare enter the caves—which they called salachi— because theybelieved that the stalagmites and stalactiteswere the embodiment of evil spirits who pre-

vented their entering. Less superstitious peo-ple would put an end to that legend by show-ing that the site was not as evil as had beenthought.Legend has it that in those times, near Te -

tipac, a local tribal chieftain was deposed andbegan to roam the mountains in search of a safehaven. During his wanderings, he discoveredthese enormous caverns and was not only awe -s truck at the spectacle, but right there thoughtup a stratagem to recover his throne. Deter -mined to win, he spoke to one of his daugh-ters who no one else knew and taught her topass herself off as a deity to the rest of their* Mexican cave expert.

Legend and HistoryOf the Caverns Of

Cacahuamilpa 1

Sergio Santana Muñoz*

•

Elsie M

ontiel

“The Champagne Bottle.”Photo: Elsie Montiel

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people. Then, he went to visit an elder who hadremained loyal to him and took him to the ca -vern to witness the divine apparition.The old man returned to his tribe, frightened,

and told his story of what had happened in thecavern. Followed by the tribe elders and others,he visited the place again. The “divine one” wason a marvelous formation at the center of the

cavern. As soon as she saw them enter, sheraised her voice in a threatening shout, sayingthat she would wipe out the region with thefires of hell if they did not restore the deposedprince to his throne and beg his forgiveness.Seemingly, the stratagem was not only suc-cessful, but the tribe continued to worship thesecret, mysterious sanctuary of the false deityfor a very long time. According to another leg-end, this cavern was in habited by the last Az -tec emperor, Cuau hté moc, whose name means“eagle who falls on its prey.”

The entry to the caverns was covered bythick vegetation for years, so only someone whoknew about them could find them. Taking ad -van tage of this, during the war of independence,Pedro Ascencio de Alquisiras, a native of thearea and one of the right arms of General Vi -cente Guerrero, the man who finally won inde-pendence, often used them to hide his guerril-

las. They would come out to do battle with theSpanish soldiers, who they defeated severaltimes; but when they were beaten, they hidin the caverns, frustrating their pursuers, whoeven tually gave up the search.Later, Ascencio de Alquisiras would use the

interior of the caverns to hide silver, gold, jew-els and money that he took from the Spaniardsaround Taxco and the surrounding areas.The indigenous inhabitants of the town of

Cacahuamilpa carefully hid the existence of thecaves from the Spanish invaders until in 1834,

Going through the different rooms, the appreciation of its beauty and its whimsical formations will always depend on each person’s

imagination, which may consider the place an act of fantasy or fiction.

Rubén Vázquez

Elsie M

ontiel

when Mexico was already independent, theyhid Don Manuel Sáenz de la Peña, a highly res -pected rich merchant from the town of Tete ca -la wanted by the authorities for having injuredanother man in a violent quarrel.Some time later, once Sáenz re turned home,

he surprised the people of Tetecala with hisfantastic stories of what he had seen inside thecaverns. Moved by these stories, the town’s in -habitants organized the first recorded excursionto the site.Another legend says that the fa mous bandit

Agustín Lorenzo, the terror of the region, used

the caverns as one of his hide-outs, foiling per -sistent searches by law enforcement. Po pularlegend has it that on nights with a full moon,a throng of horses and riders said to be the soulsof Agustín Lorenzo and his men can be seencoming out of the caverns.In 1866, the Empress Carlota Ama lia visit-

ed the caverns, and in the Palm Room wrote,“María Carlota was here,” in Spanish on thewall. Years later, in 1872, when the monarchyhad been overthrown and Emperor Maxi mi lianshot on the Cerro de las Campanas (Hill of the

Bells) in Que r étaro, one of the victorious lead-ers of the repu blic who later became presidentof Me x ico wrote underneath the empress’swords, “Sebastián Ler do de Tejada went beyondthis point.”On March 21, 1881, General Porfirio Díaz

visited the spot, with his wife Carmen RomeroRubio and a large party. At the banquet giventhere for him, the famous composer Ju ventinoRosas debuted his marvelous waltz Carmen,composed in honor of the general’s wife.One of the most charming tales of a visit to

the caves was written by Doña Francisca Cal -

derón de la Barca, wife of Spain’s first ambas-sador to Mexico after independence. It is pub-lished as letter 33 in her book of corres pondence,La vida de México (Life in Mexico).Stories and legends abound, making it dif-

ficult to collect them all. Many famous peoplehave visited the caverns, attracted by the beautyof Mexico’s underground world. Among themare General Antonio López de Santa Ana; Pre s -idents Emilio Portes Gil and Adolfo LópezMa teos; the intellectual Guillermo Prieto; thegeographer Alexander von Humboldt; the Chi l -

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ean poet Gabriela Mistral, who dedicated afamous poem to the caverns; and intellectualsand writers like Mariano Escobedo, ManuelOroz co y Berra and Ignacio Comonfort, amongothers.The part of the caverns opened to the pub-

lic in 1920 include 20 “rooms,” separated byenormous walls of natural rock and connectedby a gallery. Inside, the ceilings are between 30and 70 meters high. Local people have namedthe rooms according to the “figures” they seemto represent: for example, the porch, the jewel

box, the dawn, the curtains, the throne, thedome and the arms plaza. After a two-kilome-ter journey along a walkway illuminated byartificial light —since no source of naturallight penetrates here— going through the dif-ferent rooms, the appreciation of its beauty andits whimsical formations will always dependon each person’s imagination, which may con-sider the place an act of fantasy or fiction,comparable perhaps to a story in “A Thousandand One Nights.” The truth is that the Ca -cahuamilpa Caverns are and have been theworld’s most majestic and frequently visitedcomplex of caves.The caves go beyond where the usual visi-

tor can go since they are part of an extensive,partially underground, hydrological system fedmainly by the Chontalcuatlán and San Jeró nimo

Rivers, which emerge and join after a long runthough the bowels of the mountain range. Themost accepted theory about the caves’ origin isthat they resulted from tectonic activity, thecollision of underground plates, which createdfissures or cracks in the limestone. Into thesecracks filtered underground water rich in car-bon dioxide, combining with other factors likepressure and temperature to form cavities andprotrusions.The site was declared a national park on

April 23, 1936, by presidential decree signedby Lázaro Cárdenas. The decree stipulates thatthe state authorities who manage the site hadto give 25 percent of the proceeds to local in -habitants. But this was never carried out, sothe communities de cided to demand their rightsfrom the Ministry of Tourism. Since they wereunsuccessful, they agreed to take over the cavesuntil the debt had been paid. Today, the cav-erns are managed by the Union of Inhabitantsof Com munities in Possession of the NationalCacahuamilpa Caverns Park.The park has two caverns, the Caca hua -

milpa and the Carlos Pacheco; two galleries;two underground rivers (the Chontacuatla andthe San Jeró nimo); and two chasms. In the me -dium term, the park management plans to cre-ate interpretative walkways, rough cabins, ahanging bridge over the river, visits to the chasms,trips on horseback, rides down the subterra -nean rivers and along the rapids, as well as ad -venture sports like rappelling and rock-climb-ing. For all of this, they will have the advisoryservices of ex perts. The management has alsoprofessionally trained its staff in caving.These caverns are located in the Taxco de

Alarcón municipality, 36 kilometers from thecity of Taxco, near the border with the State ofMexico, 146 kilometers from Mexico City and68 kilometers from Cuernavaca.

NOTES1 Information taken from the book by José RebolledoIglesias, the Cacahuamilpa Ca verns manager from 1962to 1971, Grutas de Cacahuamilpa.

Rubén Vázquez